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Just finished reading interview of Shammi Kapoor, his last before his death! It was given to Forbes India, a magazine which I have rarely read owing to its price – 100 Rs. There is something psychological about this 3-figure figure which kept scaring me away from it for all this while. Till now, I have probably invested more on books than on anything else but then it was a ‘magazine’ and it just didn’t seem to be a justified tag for a ‘magazine’ (probably that’s what is called positioning; the same content but the form of the product changes how customer perceives its ‘value for money’).

My gibberish apart, the point is that for reading such an interview, I would have gladly been willing to pay much higher. (Decisions! Decisions! Isn’t it strange! You take them and then just wait for the first opportunity to rationalize them…). But honestly! I mean it. The thoughts of that ‘setting star’ of a superstar were worth many more zeroes following a 1.

Isn’t it ironical! Someone who was famous for the best moves of his generation could barely move for years…someone whose prized possessions were his cars was left driving his wheel-chair for years…someone who was all over the world was most active on world-wide-web till it was all over…life has a strange wicked knack of making us feel so inconsequential with a few flips of the calendar on the same wall…

But this gutsy guy was up for an arm-twist with the life. His last statement in the interview was “You’re not going to kick the bucket just like that. When it happens it will happen. Till then you might as well enjoy it. It’s a beautiful world out there.” Wow! You can take such a man out of life…but can’t take life out of such a man…

When I read it, I just got reminded of an anecdote which I often quote during my training-workshops. While shooting for a dance-sequence in Bobby, Rishi Kapoor was utterly nervous, couldn’t even face the camera, and kept saying ‘I just can’t do that’. At that time the famous RK (Raj Kapoor) gave him a slap and said “You are a Kapoor! And Kapoors don’t lose!”

I am sure that this must have been said by Prithvi Raj Kapoor to Raj Kapoor……with Shammi overhearing it!

My 4th day in Viral. I am amused at how different ‘down with fever’ and ‘down with viral’ sound. ‘down with viral’ has so much more class to it, so much more panache, intensity, pride and ‘sense of importance’… I can’t help but revel into that extra touch of sympathy that it invokes into everyone who I talk to over phone… but sadly that’s what it is…frustrating but true, and it being Diwali, its timing couldn’t have been worse either…(here comes my masterstroke at invoking sympathy). Imgaine my misery, I even SMSed this Diwali context to a student who expressed her desire to come over to office to meet me for some advice (quite unlike someone like me, who is usually pretty understated in choice of his expressions). Anyways, before this whole stuff becomes a rant on my state-of-being, let me come to what prompted me to go online with my thoughts…

In the last few days, with all the time in the world to dip myself into self-pity, I gorged onto books on the rack. I chose the two newest entrants…Ramadorai’s ‘the TCS story’ and Wood’s ‘Leaving Microsoft to change the world’. I am still reading them simultaneously (Wait! I am not ambidextrous and even if I am, I still have only a couple of eyes), which means, reading one while taking a break from reading another. While juggling them a very important commonness dawned upon me. And a few minutes later, a commonness among all the bios/autobios…it is the concept of ‘role model’.

While the lesser mortals kept getting either infatuated to the ‘Roles’ (DDLJ’s Raj, KKHH’s Rahul) or besotted by the ‘Models’ (or for that matter supermodels), these fulfilled & contributive people had role-models to look up to. When Ramadorai talked about FC Kohli or Wood talked about his father, I had a sense of Déjà vu of Bagchi talking about his mother, Welch talking about his mother, Gates talking about his mother, Sergey & Larry talking about Rajeev Motwani (their teacher), Ratan Tata talking about Jeh, Sabeer Bhatia talking about his Math teacher, Imran talking about Aamir or Ballmer talking about his mother, Nilekani talking about his uncle and so on and so forth…

In their lives was a strong positive influence of a person who aspired for higher rather than mediocre. Amidst the waves of mediocrity, they had a lighthouse guiding themselves to higher contributions… better being.

So, have a role-model! If you don’t find one, search! If you can’t find one, change your orbit!